


Wired in Red

by jyorraku



Category: Luther (TV), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:02:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jyorraku/pseuds/jyorraku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was an easy enough mistake to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wired in Red

**Author's Note:**

> This was partially inspired by the mention of the Very Large Array in LithiumDoll's “Culture and Other Balls of Twine”.
> 
> All the characters don't belong to me. All the fails do belong to me.

New York City was full of straight lines, parallel and perpendicular, towering and long, unbent and unbroken. They taunted the Other Guy and haunted Bruce. Thankfully, the Avengers Tower had distractions to suspend the impulse and bury the ghosts. The nuclear physicist version of shiny and sparkly could only have come from a person who was no stranger to bombastic shine and sparkle, with the brains to match.

It was never about being smart.

*

Bruce stood under the dwarfing shadow of an antenna dish.  The white dishes dotted the arid landscape, tiny buds of civilization flowering in the desert. Tracks of loose dirt were underfoot from the latest reconfiguration of these giant apparatuses. The hybrid design could find something novel, an unknown minor planet or a neighboring black hole. If they did find something too close for comfort, he had no doubt that SHIELD would be there in an instant to take out the offending body that dared to venture into its jurisdiction.

Bruce was squinting against the white heat of the New Mexico sun, feeling the burn of the photons, when he saw her. Her hair was aflame in a fiery red, a tribute to blistering sun above them.

“I wasn’t even gone that long,” Bruce said wearily, then added, “Not that I don’t appreciate the company.” They saved the world together, he could be nice.

She turned at the sound of his voice.

Not Natasha.

Bruce shuffled back, balancing an invisible mass. “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

Not Natasha considered him with a slow blink, a ripple stirring deep and then, efflorescence. She breathed a long exhale, her pupils a beckoning whirlpool of black.

“Bully for her.”

Her lips curled, arching into a coquettish bloom.

His own lips parted thoughtlessly.  “I…” His brows knotted with bemusement, but the sun’s heat was inebriating and there was one eyebrow raised quite expectantly in his direction.

“I’m Bruce,” he offered with a nervous twitch of a smile.

She hummed satisfactorily, and leaned in just close enough to invite him to do the same. 

“Alice,” Not Natasha whispered, a name, a word, a tendril of smoke sinking deep and fading fast.

It was an easy enough mistake to make.

*

The desert had occasional thunderstorms. This one was particularly—suspiciously drenching with copious amounts of lightning. Right in the middle Nelson’s theory on accelerons. Bruce didn’t think SHIELD would use Thor that way.

But Tony might. If there was anyone most likely to hold a grudge at his unannounced departure, it was him.

Bruce was entirely elsewhere when he offered Alice a dry towel. The crash back down to earth was facilitated by the soft but firm imprint of her breasts on his chest. The debris was then set on fire by the outline of her nipples, tight and puckered, tracing an incendiary line upward as she rose to her toes and licked the droplets of rain off the hollow base of his throat. Small but nimble fingers reached down his pants, deftly stirring the conflagration.

“This isn’t a very good idea,” Bruce commented, his arms lying at his sides, hands still clutching the towels.

“No. It’s a very brilliant idea. I’m quite bright, you see,” Alice countered, her fingers multitasking below.

Bruce did see, yet someone as smart as Alice should have a stronger sense of self preservation. It was a bit worrying.

Fingernails from her other hand raked at the skin behind his neck.

Bruce hissed in discomfort, watching wide-eyed as Alice idly admired the specs of crimson beneath her nails. She sucked her fingers curiously, tasting the exotic concoction. Her gaze flickered to his, eyes glittering in the dim light, hunting and hungry. It was enough. Bruce clutched tightly at Alice’s wrists, bring all things, seduction and life endangering recklessness, to a halt.  He wasn’t prepared for the sensation of touch underneath his own fingertips. Her skin was thin there, where hand met arm, nearly translucent except where it had healed in knots. He traced his thumb over the unhesitating line of scarred skin. His grip released on its own accord, but she took her time to escape, fingertips ghosting over his knuckles, spidering up his forearm and weaving a web of sensation that had him swallowing tightly.

It was a situation that was escaping the semblance of reason.

“You scare me,” Bruce breathed.

The words tremble through Alice, oxygen to flames. “Good.”  She took his hand and guided it, sliding his calloused palm over wet, glistening skin until it rested over her pounding heart. “You scare me.” Her breath came to a bated halt, her limbs no longer ensnaring, but the bare curves beneath his hand was a siren’s song.

Frowning, Bruce pressed his fingers not so gently into her flesh, creating distance and warning in one expedited gesture. To his consternation, his action only propelled her own, a dare taken, a line crossed. Alice hooked his fingers onto the low neckline of her camisole and pulled. His knuckles grazed over the exposed tip of her bared breast and she gasped with a whimper that echoed a wanting ache in the marrow of his bones, all the way down to his toes. It jolted back up when she pushed forward, rolling her hips against him, and expert fingers kneading into tense contours of his skull. His peripheral vision snapped in, colors colliding into a whiteout.

The outline of Alice darkened back to life. Slivers of green flickering in her clear cold eyes. Bruce jolted, arms lifting into ready wings. Her nails dug deep, a tinsel strength made iron as Alice grinned unrepentantly with those sharp, flushed lips. She closed the last inch between them until their hearts mirrored, fed beasts racing on an elixir high.

“Isn’t it grand?”Alice murmured silkily into his ear.

Bruce breathed, the air full with red.

“Yes. I suppose it is.”

*

It was unlike Alice to be this late, especially since she arranged this particular outing. She promised it would be the last straw to break his back. Then he’d have no other choice but to always lie supine and gaze into the massive sky, to finally see and admire its careless chaos and pitiless order.

Physicists could be a strange breed. Astrophysicists, more so—though, none as particular as Alice.

Bruce lifted the curtains, hoping to spot that glimpse of familiar red. He saw it, a wisp of scarlet, and opened the door.

Not Alice.  

“Hi.”

“Hello,” Natasha returned the greeting. “Tony wants to find you.”

Bruce sighed, pulling on his shirt cuffs. “I’m starting to regret getting Tony reacquainted with the benefits of peer review.”

“I’ve thrown him off your trail, but it won’t be long now. Sorry.”

“Thank you.” It would be inappreciative now, to ask. He asked anyhow, pleasantly, because she was here when and where Alice should be and she was a superspy, so, obviously. “Where’s Alice?”

“I followed her,” Natasha said with the same ease as one would order coffee. She looked out the window, away from him, her shoulders held straight in an unbroken line.

Followed. Past tense. Bruce breathed out quietly. He likened Alice to a Russian doll, one layer inside another, until the last one that opened to a void painted black. The dark could be soothing, and an absence could be liberating.

“I lost her. I don’t lose people.” Natasha voiced pulled him back.

Bruce wondered if he heard wrong. One look at Natasha said he didn’t. He didn’t want to delve any further, not where Alice was concerned. But Natasha’s words flowed around that obstacle, pooling into a mirror with a reflection he couldn’t unsee.

 “Bruce.”

Natasha’s hand was next to his on the table, but not touching. Bruce looked up and realized he had sat down. There were five thin scratches at the edge of the table.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said softly, and she meant it. His paramour was much too skilled in subterfuge.

Natasha was a friend and the commensuration was not without deep and exacting concern. It compelled him to speak, phantom fingers plucking at his vocal cords. “There aren’t that many women astrophysicists in England,” he supplied vaguely, threads of resistance fraying.

Natasha withdrew her hand from the table. She stared unblinkingly at him.

Too much. Bruce quickly amended, “The gender disparity is actually quite a shame.”

Natasha was stone faced.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Not even close, Banner.

“You knew,” Natasha concluded tonelessly.

Well behaved astrophysicists rarely made the evening news. When they did, good or bad, that news made its way into the physics listservs.

Bruce shrugged, eyelids heavy. “What could she do to me that I haven’t tried to do to myself?”

Natasha wanted to pummel him.

“Did you think it would be easier if you had to leave or to break someone who’s already gone bad?”

Bruce clasped his hands together, frowning. The chair beneath him groaned.

Natasha smiled thinly. “I’m sorry. That was mean.” She stepped back, then sat on the other chair that was set against the wall. The length of her folded into angles, a spring compacting. He looked on, wary.

“And if I lock her away?” Natasha asked, forgoing all pretence.

“I rather you didn’t do that,” Bruce answered mildly.

Natasha tipped her head, gazing at up him. “She’s not your average sociopath.”

The wallpaper was suddenly fascinating, but his knuckles were white. “You…” Bruce stopped, his right thumb brushing against the outline of a vein on his left wrist, “…shouldn’t.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “The scar?” Her gaze abruptly sharpened into flints. “That was for show.”

Bruce ran a hand roughly into his hair. “Alice--”

A long pale arm looped over his neck.

“—can speak for herself,” Alice finished before placing a linger kiss at the corner of Bruce’s pinched mouth. She pouted prettily, “What’s up, Doc?”

Bruce closed his eyes with an audible sigh. Her skin felt cool beneath his jaw, but her breath was warm against his ear. “You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured.

“Why ever not? Is it because I’ve killed three people and your friend is afraid I’ll escalate into something less pedestrian?  Or perhaps she’s bothered because we’re having sex and she’s missed the opportunity to do the same?”

Natasha looked away, her mouth downturned.

“It’s not necessarily an either-or proposition.” Alice grinned wide, her hands clapping together. “So then, all of the above?”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t care.” Natasha ducked her head.

“True.” Alice seated herself on Bruce’s lap, nuzzling his unshaven cheek. “And you?” she whispered into his neck.

He only said her name. “Alice.”

Alice sighed melodramatically. “The policeman was wretched specimen.” She add with a roll of her eyes, “Crooked as well. Killing him brought me a great deal of inconvenience.”

But that wasn’t the most morally egregious of all her misdeeds.

“My parents, well, I enjoyed their demise quite thoroughly.” Alice casted a sidelong glance at Natasha and smirked. “They were obsessed with testing, training, and securing their asset. Nature and nurture, measured and cataloged. It was tedious, I grew bored.”

“They were your handlers?” Bruce asked, astonished.

Alice all but giggled, wrapping strands of her hair on her index finger, spirals of red on a spindle. “Da. Fortunately, my genetic material came from a better stock.”

Natasha stood up shakily, her face pale.

“Shall I tell you their real names?” Alice asked her, peering up with a pout.

Question ignored, a few steps out, and the door handle was turning in the palm of her hand. Natasha stopped and dropped her head over her shoulder. Her lips trembled as she murmured, “Will I recognize them, your handlers?”

Alice observed Natasha’s despondence with an icy visage. “You would have killed them yourself,” she snapped.

Natasha straightened and turned about face. “Yet they’re already dead,” she said, eyes clear and wide, mouth carved into the shape of a shark’s steady grin.

The hind legs of Bruce’s chair squeaked.

Alice blinked.  She doubled over, shoulder quaking before erupting into laughter.

“Touché.”

Rays of daylight filtered through the open door. Natasha growled in their direction, “Don’t break anything.” The door didn’t slam, but if the soft click of a closing door could convey disapproval, this one did.

“Aren’t we a bit old to be chastened?” Alice retorted as she quickly remove herself and Bruce from the workhorse of a chair.

Bruce kept his steps small, allowing Alice to lead as he worked through the numbness in his leg and brain.  When they stopped, he started carefully, “Natasha is—“

Alice shoved him into the bed. “Unexpectedly lenient. She said nothing about undressing and fucking.” The belt loops of his pants were smoking as the strip of leather flew across the room. Agile fingers clawed through the fly of his pants and the thin cloth beneath. His hips arched sharply, but Bruce halted the erotic work of her hands with a tight grip.

“Alice.”

Alice grinded her pelvis into his.

Bruce sighed unevenly, his eyes sad. Alice stopped, her upper lip curling, baring teeth.

“Aren’t we friends?” Bruce inquired gently.

Alice attempted to free herself but he wasn’t letting go. “I already have a friend,” she hissed.

“Your friend isn’t here now, I am.”

Bruce held Alice’s gaze and slowly released her wrists to cup her face in his hands. He rose from the bed to place a kiss on her forehead. Alice jerked, nails digging into his naked hips. He flinched, but forced his grimace to subside.

Alice narrowed her eyes at him. “You want to know what happened, how I found out? Motive and opportunity in a neat bow?”

“No,” Bruce shook his head, “I want you to tell me your story, so I can be a better friend.”

Alice frowned at that, lost in thought with a far away gaze. When she returned, she cocked her head at him.

“Will you tell me your story after?”

Bruce shifted uneasily. “Only if you promise not to kill anyone in it.”

“Even if they become a threat to you?”

The answer came quickly when he assessed the steely look in her eyes. “Yes, even then.”

“Do you ask this of all your friends?”

Bruce opened his mouth, but another yes never made its way out. He was pretty sure Tony would just laugh in his face, Natasha and Clint would nod creepily, Thor would claim not to understand, and Steve would sympathize with his supposed issues—and then when the time came, they would all do whatever they wanted in the first place. Protect, and if necessary, avenge. He wasn’t exactly displeased at the sentiment, but he didn’t want anyone to get hurt on his behalf.

Alice saved him from further contemplation.  “I’ll consider it,” she said with a poised smile, sickly sweet despite the subject matter of lethal force, or because of it.

He had strange friends.

Under Alice’s regretful observation, Bruce redid his pants. He then threw a blanket over Alice and another one over himself as they sat cross legged on the bed. It was story time and all that was missing was the camp fire.

“It started with the birds and the bees and a place called the Red Room…” Alice began.


End file.
